The exclusive WND story by Chris Smith, “Russian missile scandal prompts
Hill 'outrage',” which quotes you as being the Hill fellow who is outraged,
is one of the most incredible stories of Pentagon incompetence I have ever
read. There seems to have been knuckleheadedness at several levels of
decision-making and I of course agree with you that there should be full-scale
congressional hearings to review the process that led to this state of
affairs. Here is my understanding of what has happened:

1. The Russians possess a supersonic missile called the “Sunburn,” which
seems to be the best in the world for the purpose of skimming along the ocean
and blowing up an aircraft carrier. They developed these before the Cold War
ended almost ten years ago.

2. Our fleets need to be able to defend themselves against such missiles,
which means they need to be able to develop anti-missile systems and then
practice shooting them down.

3. In 1993 and then again in 1995 the Russians proposed to sell us 100 Sunburn
missiles, cheap, in order to get the hard currency at a time when they were in
desperate straits. We could then use the Sunburns for target practice, minus
their warheads, of course.

4. The Pentagon began the process which might lead to the purchase of what you
now call “the greatest threat today against the U.S. Navy.”

5. The process was interrupted when someone in the Pentagon decided: “Why
buy from the Russians what we can build ourselves?” A contract was given to
Boeing/McDonnell Douglas to build a “target” missile from scratch. The
contractors said they could always “upgrade” the target missile to achieve
the capabilities of the Sunburn.

6. The contractors now have acknowledged that their target missile “from
scratch” does not perform according to requirements.

7. Meanwhile, the Russians have sold the Sunburns to the Chinese, along with a
Russian-made destroyer upon which they are mounted. There are said to be plans
for eight more destroyers.

8. The Pentagon now wants to go back to the Russians and buy the Sunburn from
them. According to the WND report, you have expressed doubts about this.

The report also says you are not alone in your evaluation of the Sunburn:
“In July 1999, Jamestown Foundation defense analyst Richard Fisher wrote an
evaluation of the Russian-built Sunburn missile being sold to China. According
to Fisher, the U.S. Navy cannot stop the Sunburn. ‘The Sunburn anti-ship
missile is perhaps the most lethal anti-ship missile in the world,’ wrote
Fisher in a review of the Chinese navy. ‘The Sunburn combines a Mach 2.5
speed with a very low-level flight pattern that uses violent end maneuvers to
throw off defenses. After detecting the Sunburn, the U.S. Navy Phalanx point
defense system may have only 2.5 seconds to calculate a fire solution -- not
enough time before the devastating impact of a 750-lb. warhead.'"

The WND story says the Chinese Sunburns on their single Russian-built
destroyer are “nuclear-tipped.” There is no reason to believe that is the
case, but it is enough to know they could be. It would not be necessary for
China to take out an aircraft carrier with a “nuclear-tipped” warhead when
a conventional warhead would be enough to do the trick. We remember the
problems the Brits had with the French-made Exocit missile in the Falkland
Islands war. The real stupidity of the Pentagon decision to build a target
from scratch instead of buying the real thing from the Russians is that we
could have prevented the Chinese from acquiring the missiles, not for target
practice, but to take out our fleet. No?

Gordon Prather, who was deputy assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan
years and is now a WND columnist, surmises that the Clinton Pentagon was
thinking of developing a competitor to the Sunburn which could produce
megabucks via sales of the upgrade. Upgrade? Who would want to buy the most
effective killer of Aircraft carriers when for all practical purposes we have
the only fleets? The highest priority should have been how to protect the
fleet. Now the fleet must look down the nose of the Chinese Sunburn and know
it could not stop it.

I really do hope you hold hearings to find out exactly how these decisions
were made, Congressman, although I suspect the Military-Industrial Complex
would find some four-star schmoe to take the fall when a lot of military folk
and contractors were overwhelmed by the gravy train.